Of course, iRiver had to be one of the main companies out there - as far as DAP-business is concerned, anyway. Who would have ever thought that the once so-nimble-and-ever-so-puny South Korean firm would grow into something big enough to set up a gazillion Dollar stand at probably the largest expo in the world? Well, whatever the anwer to that question might be - iRiver just did it. Their booth was stylishly put together, boasting some of those $ 4k ball-chain chairs, plus even some fish tank-like floor thing (might want to check the firmware on that one, guys) - but there were little sursprises to be spotted at first glance.

Good thing for us - and you - that we happened to know what we were looking for: the H10 Junior, the 1GB flash version of the H10 range. Oh, and we got to see it alright. Not after asking for it repeatedly, only to be shown a toppled mock-up at day 1, but anyway. Yes, it's very, very tiny. The most-commonly adressed design issue would have to be the stamp-sized screen, but in fact it's all pretty high-res in there. Actually, the Junior does about everything its older brothers are supposed to be capable of (hence the exact same lay-out of the screen). A few differences can be tracked down, though.

First of all, the claimed battery life on the Junior is about near-ridiculous levels - some 60 hours, according to the iRiver Europe rep. Eh... 60? As in "sixty"? Our guess would have to be that this will probably translate into something like 20 hours with the backlight constantly switched on - still a very good deal, of course. Unfortunately, H10's removeable battery has been replaced by a static one for the Junior edition - that was to be expected. Then there's an adjusted docking station as well. Unlike the regular H10's dock, the Junior comes with a translucent cradle; a half-ball shaped one at that. There were 4 outputs on it - USB, power, audio-in and -out.

Prices for the Junior edition haven't been set to strict values yet, but were said to be around 199 euro or 229USD. release dates? Ehm... probably somewhere around the next 90 days, to keep on the safe side of things.

Inspired by the 5GB H10, iRiver also has the 20GB edition on display. It's pretty much what you'd expected it to be, although the screen seems to come off a little bit better, though - no pointless frameworks to be spotted around the 20GB's LCD. However, it's actually a bit... lumpy. According to the iRiver spokesperson, the company is considering to switch to Toshiba hard drives to create a slimmer 1.8-inch hdd-based player (currently, the H10 uses a 20GB Hitachi drive). To finalize things, we'll just add that the H10's current chipset does support USB-Host, but iRiver has not yet implemented it because of stability concerns. Might pop up eventually, though .